Rashi on Vayechi: Denial and the Beginning of Egyptian Enslavement

Rabbi Zweig addresses a difficult Rashi (רש"י) at the beginning of Parshas Vayechi. Rashi asks why this parsha is written without the usual break (parsha pesuma or sesuma) that separates most Torah (תורה) portions. He answers that when Yaakov died, "nishtamu eineihem v'libam shel Yisrael" (the eyes and hearts of Israel were sealed) due to the beginning of the enslavement. The problem is that Rashi's language seems to take poetic license—"parsha sesuma" is a technical halachic term meaning a blank space of nine letters in a sefer Torah, yet Rashi applies it metaphorically to the sealing of eyes and hearts, which seems unrelated to the technical meaning. Furthermore, there is a famous contradiction: Rashi states here that the enslavement began when Yaakov died, yet elsewhere Rashi writes that the actual bondage began only when Levi, the last of the brothers, died at age 137. Since Levi was approximately 43 years old when he came to Egypt (Yosef was 39 at the time), and Yaakov lived another 17 years after arriving, Levi would have been about 60 when Yaakov died. This creates a discrepancy of 77 years between when Rashi says the enslavement began in Vayechi versus when it actually began according to the other source.